Sirtaj Singh Kang is one of the app-producing machines that helped propel Unix into the desktop arena way back in the legendary days of the KDE genesis. His native tongue is Perl and his boot-up sequence involves a quirky coffee-shower combination. We also look forward to Taj's soon-to be-released mysterious Python application that will allegedly forever change the way we open the doors of luxurious buildings. Or something.

Summer is approaching at full-speed while Tink pines for her well-deserved holidays. This installment of the People behind KDE series is quickly nearing a summer break as well, and this week, as well as the next, we will enjoy double interviews.

It's a well-kept secret that KDE games are no longer toys but maturing entertainment applications. Games such as KMines (link updated) demonstrate the concept of global highscores as well as general plans to provide an online gaming framework. We're pleased to announce that the GGZ Gaming Zone, an open alternative to Microsoft's Gaming Zone, adds to the arsenal of KDE gaming resources with the 0.0.4 release.

Due to recent instabilities in the CVS code, Waldo Bastian has announced that KDE 2.2beta1 has been delayed in favour of a message and feature freeze that will last a few days. During that time, developers will be busy finding bugs and bringing KDE CVS up to shape for a beta release. This probably means that KDE 2.2 will be released closer to July 30 than the previously planned July 23.

This week, Tink brings KDE hacker Frerich Raabe under scrutiny in the People Behind KDE series. Frerich is responsible for KNewsTicker, the Kicker applet around which, allegedly, most of KDE has been designed and implemented. For more laughs, read the interview here.

Two months ago, we announced the birth of Gideon, codename for the next generation version of KDevelop that was most notable for its modularity and extensibility. Since then, Gideon has made enormous strides -- not the least of which includes Java, Perl, Python, PHP and Fortran support, full Python scripting, and an editor framework that will allow one to plug in a favourite editor.